Nasreddin: The World Is Going To End Today

One day, the boys of Nasreddin’s village said to him, ‘You have a nice, fat sheep. Will you invite us to a party to eat it with you?’

Nasreddin did not want the boys to eat his sheep, so he said, ‘It is not fat enough yet.’

‘But have you not heard?’ they said. ‘The world is going to end tomorrow, so the sheep will never get fat!’

Nasreddin was getting tired of this, so he said, ‘All right, boys, we will have a picnic tomorrow, and eat the sheep.’

So the next morning they all went to the river, the boys took off their clothes and jumped into the water, and Nasreddin killed the sheep.

When the boys came out, their clothes were not there.

‘Where are our clothes, Nasreddin?’ they asked.

‘Oh,’ he answered. ‘I made the fire to cook the sheep with your clothes. You will not need them again. The world is going to end today, don’t you remember?’

(L.A. Hill, Elementary Stories for Reproduction, Oxford University Press)